All 399 District Council election hopefuls passed a patriotism assessment required before they can enter December’s race, a government-led vetting committee has announced.
The District Council Eligibility Review Committee, chaired by the city’s number two official Eric Chan, confirmed on Friday that all 399 candidates had been validly nominated to join the newly-restricted election on December 10.
All the election hopefuls, who sought nominations from three government-appointed local committees, met the legal requirement of upholding the Basic Law and bearing allegiance to the Hong Kong SAR, a government statement said.
The names, addresses and candidate numbers of the 399 individuals were published in the Gazette on Friday.
The government received 400 nominations forms on October 30, but one nominee withdrew from the Tuen Mun East geographical constituency.
No opposition candidates
An HKFP analysis found that more than 75 per cent of the candidates running in the directly-elected geographical constituencies are also members of the committees responsible for nominating who runs.
Opposition parties said last month that they were unable to enter the election after failing to secure the required nominations.
The December District Council election will be the first under a revamped format which sharply reduces the number of directly elected seats.
Plans to overhaul the District Council elections were unveiled in May 2023 to ensure only “patriots” were elected, following a pro-democracy landslide at the last polls in 2019.
The number of seats chosen democratically by the public was slashed from 452 to 88 – reducing the power of public votes to a fifth. The rest are chosen by the city’s leader and government-appointed committees.
Constituency boundaries were redrawn, the opposition were shut out, voting hours were slashed by an hour, and each local council is now chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates undergo national security vetting to ensure patriotism.
